


Other People's Heartache

by Schistosity



Series: Other People's Heartache [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, POV Outsider, Spoilers for Episode 87, anyway have magic mom being a well-meaning snoop, ish, that sure was an episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:48:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21714052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schistosity/pseuds/Schistosity
Summary: Allura doesn’t take her eyes off the Mighty Nein when she hands them over to the Martinet, not for a second.She knows very well how dirty politics can chew up and spit out good people, and she would not be able to count herself among those good people if she were to stand by and abandon folk as earnest as these.Allura sees fragments of a story in the throne room that she's not sure she wants to be told.
Series: Other People's Heartache [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1566433
Comments: 26
Kudos: 419





	Other People's Heartache

**Author's Note:**

> why am i incapable of writing short things?

Allura doesn’t take her eyes off the Mighty Nein when she hands them over to the Martinet, not for a second.

She knows very well how dirty politics can chew up and spit out good people, and she would not be able to count herself among those good people if she were to stand by and abandon folk as earnest as these.

So, she wanders over to the foot of the dais, and makes a slow show of tidying up her robes and checking her bag and – oops! where _did_ she put that scroll? – for just a few more seconds of acceptable loitering. A few more moments to make sure they’re okay, though most everyone else has left the room.

It’s perhaps unwise, she thinks, to linger for no reason other than worry, especially when she has already strained her tentative welcome here.

She can almost _feel_ the king’s eyes on her, hairs rising on the back of her neck as he wills her to _fuck off back to Tal’Dorei_ like the good little diplomat he’d obviously wanted her to be, but she doesn’t dare look back at him.

That would mean admitting he had shaken her, even a little. Allura has a list of people who are allowed to see her shaken, and King Bertrand Dwendal is most definitely not on that list.

She had expected a reaction from him upon revelation of her meeting with Leylas Krynn; he’s always been arrogant. It’s a reputation that often precedes him. A paranoid and insular man – content to keep his corner of Exandria his. To stay out, to stay away, to keep within.

A possessive man, and though she had thought herself a guest in this nation, he had apparently thought her a possession instead.

Still, she wouldn’t have changed what she had done.

The Bright Queen had spoken very highly of the Mighty Nein – that is a fact she’d kept to herself, a detail of her travels to Xhorhas that would have turned the king’s simmering anger to boiling rage.

“Strange ones, are they not?” The empress had said, something surprisingly close to a smirk playing on her dark lips. “Kind, in their way, but quick to assume they are not trusted.”

“And are they right to?” Allura had asked. “Does the Dynasty trust them?”

The man beside the Queen had laughed at that – the Shadowhand, she had recalled, or at least that’s how he has been introduced to her. Her eyes had flickered to him for just a moment, and she had been a little shocked to find his expression one of open mirth, not disdain or confusion as she had expected. 

“Trust? Perhaps not entirely,” he’d said with a smile. “But I believe I speak for myself and Her Majesty when I say we are inclined to… put a little bit of _faith_ in them.”

“Your Majesty?” Allura had asked, looking to the empress for confirmation.

The Bright Queen had nodded. “The Mighty Nein have proven themselves capable and honest… when it counts. They are good people, if odd, and it is as the Shadowhand says. Though I must admit I do not find myself as _personally_ _taken_ with them as he.”

Allura hadn’t had nearly enough time to unpack whatever in the _Hells_ that had meant, so she had simply nodded.

“We will heed your advice, Lady Vysoren,” the empress had continued. “I will not allow myself to be used as a pawn in someone else’s game.”

_Used as a pawn in someone else’s game._

The Bright Queen’s phrasing tumbles through Allura’s head, even now, as she keeps her covert eye on the Mighty Nein speaking in low tones to Martinet Da’leth.

She wouldn’t change what she had done. But she is going to have to come to terms that it’s those actions that have placed the Mighty Nein in the position they are now.

Diplomats. She not so sure they’re ready for such a thing, based on her previous encounters with them. But the Expositor _had_ impressed her today. So, maybe… maybe this would work.

Maybe.

Allura must remind herself that the Dwendalian Empire is not Tal’Dorei, though its dressings may be similar at first glance. She sees echoes of Whitestone in this castle, both abodes being so far north. But Whitestone is kinder… overseen by kinder people than this Assembly and this king they appear to have a leash on.

She watches the Martinet with narrowed eyes. She knows a fair bit about mages – about influence – about power. These Cerberus mages have it all in surplus… and now they have the Mighty Nein.

And perhaps that will be a good thing, in the end, but it is no doubt at least partially her fault.

“Pardon me, Lady Vysoren,” comes a voice from behind her.

Allura pulls her eyes from the gathered party just in time to see the rake-thin form of Trent Ikithon, crimson robes swept neatly over one shoulder, brush past her.

“Apologies, Master Ikithon,” she manages to say, stepping to the side to let him past, but he’s already striding across the room.

He walks slowly, almost meandering, but there’s a smug confidence in it that throws Allura with how out of place it is.

It’s too _eager_. He and the other Assembly members had tried so hard to construct masks of ambivalence during the meeting; trying to give the Mighty Nein the impression they were above all this _mercenary_ business.

Allura had, privately, wanted to laugh. Someone needed to tell the mages the Mighty Nein wouldn’t care – that the band of seven bleeding, beaten travellers cared more about getting their story out than what the mages thought of them.

But Ikithon’s demeanour is different, somehow. He walks forward in a faux-casual stride one wouldn’t notice if they weren’t, perhaps, looking for it like Allura is. He walks with his weight on his toes, leaning forward a little too far in his eagerness to reach his destination.

Eager.

 _Hungry_.

He stalks towards the Mighty Nein, and Allura feels the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end once more – this time she knows it’s not from any phantom glare she is receiving from King Dwendal.

Allura has never met Master Ikithon before, but she has heard his name. She remembers that now. She remembers where she heard it.

From the Mighty Nein themselves.

They had been gathered in Yussa’s study, not a few days prior. Much like now, they had been worse for wear after a harrowing day. And much like now, Allura had found an excuse to hang back and listen. Though their conversation had taken a turn away from the impending threat of Tharizdun and steered more towards Empirical avenues for the Mighty Nein to gain aid, she had wanted to stay to take back as much information to the Council as possible.

“I have a friend in the Empire,” Yussa had offered, and judging from her relatively amicable conversations with Master Oremid Hass before this meeting, Allura supposes the Mighty Nein had taken him up on that offer.

But there had been more to that. At the mention of Oremid, at the name of the Assembly passing Yussa’s lips, the group had bristled. Allura had watched them from a distance, had seen the lines of their bodies tense with shades of panic and anger and fear.

The Mighty Nein had begun to speak then, but only to each other. It was an odd thing to behold – to see people so in tune begin to talk as if they were the only ones in the room. Or it would have been an odd thing, if it hadn’t made Allura think so strongly of another group.

An older group, so different, yet so similar. A party – a family – who would stick together, sometimes so tightly that the world around them fell away. Heads pressed together in desperate huddles, plans whispered, secrets shared… to the only ones who mattered.

It made her smile a little, to look over at the Mighty Nein and be graced with such charming echoes of older days.

But the conversation had taken a stranger turn very quickly.

_We met him – and Trent Ikithon._

The name had hung over the group like storm clouds, garnering enough of a silent reaction that Allura had paused her quiet, idle observation to see if she recognised the name. She hadn’t.

_Trent saw Caleb?_

_No!_

_He didn’t._

Yussa’s eyes had narrowed at that, flicking briefly to the party’s young wizard with veiled confusion, and Allura had removed the mental note she’d made to ask Yussa if he knew what they’d been talking about.

She’d be lying if she were to say she isn’t curious, but she does not know these people; she is not part of this family.

“If there is a concern with this Trent,” Yussa had replied slowly, voice measured, “then just avoid him.”

 _Well they can’t do that now_ , Allura thinks.

Allura watches the Mighty Nein as the Martinet leaves, watches their bodies relax just a fraction, shedding the mantles of politics that don’t seem to fit them quite right.

And then she sees them see Ikithon, and those mantles are replaced by something altogether different. 

Rage.

The tiefling, Jester, is the first to spring to action.

She’s short – far shorter than the man she’s moving to… shield? Allura can’t be entirely sure – but the contained fury rolling off her in waves as she steps forward hits Allura from across the room and makes her seem much bigger. It sets her teeth on edge, momentarily, to see such a small form – one that had only ever spoken to Allura with tones of bubbly optimism – look so hateful.

She decides the motion is a protective one when she focuses on the wizard, Caleb, who seems to shrink back as Jester steps in front of him.

She’d spoken to him briefly at Tidepeak, as she had all of them, and he had struck her as a very intelligent man. Perhaps not a _confident_ one – “I’m something between a protegé and an apprentice” he’d told her, as if he didn’t quite believe it himself – but a capable one… an observant one… driven and sharp in the way magicians so often are.

He’s none of those things now, covered in his own drying blood and stooped at the shoulders, eyes downcast and bloodshot, looking so much like a child awaiting punishment it’s almost jarring.

The Cobalt Soul Expositor, Beauregard, is the second to move, though she doesn’t have to move far. She’s already standing next to Caleb, but she presses herself closer to him anyway, arms instantly crossed, openly glaring at the Archmage as if challenging him.

The last one to move is the firbolg, Caduceus, who moves to loom behind Caleb with the protective aura of a guard dog. It’s a little strange and a little scary to see all seven feet of the man – who had been so tender with his group at Yussa’s, so healing – drenched in blood and radiating danger.

The others don’t move but they shift as Ikithon approaches. Fjord crosses his arms and squares his shoulders, eyes flicking back and forth between Ikithon and Caleb, gauging every minute motion. Nott, the little goblin who had clung so tightly to Caleb at Yussa’s home, stands close to his side, slitted gaze trained on the archmage.

Allura fears just a little bit for Ikithon’s safety; she’s known enough people of Nott’s…. _rogue-ish_ persuasion over the years to be almost certain that the little woman is still armed.

The new one – Yasha – looks positively murderous, though Allura has not known her long enough to know if that is normal. But for a second – just for a second – Allura swears the distant sounds of rain outside grow stronger.

They stand there, drenched in blood and ichor and beaten near-to-death, looking like they can barely stand, and they stay their ground.

All Allura can do is watch.

Ikithon barely stops, pausing to idle casually and confidently as he says something too quiet for Allura to hear from her distance. The Mighty Nein clock him with narrowed eyes and barely controlled snarls.

He says something else, and it is this that pulls Caleb’s eyes to him for the first time – startlingly blue, even from as far away as Allura is – but so _dead_. They brim with… something… some tumultuous emotion… as he sinks deeper down into his bloodied coat, shying away from the man in front of him.

Allura feels something deep inside her go cold.

And then Ikithon is moving again, striding away in that smug, meandering gait he had approached them in.

“Lady Vysoren?” A servant girl is approaching her now. “I’m to take you to your chambers now.”

“Just a moment,” Allura whispers.

She watches the Mighty Nein watch Ikithon leave, sees the little goblin’s luminous yellow eyes trail after him with open, vehement hatred. They stand as still as statues until the double doors close behind the archmage.

Beau turns swiftly, grabbing Caleb by the arm and whispering something in his ear. He doesn’t respond in any way Allura can see, but this doesn’t sway Beau.

She mutters something to the rest of the group, and they all kick into motion. As they walk towards the doors, they stay in that loose flanking position, Caleb, sandwiched between Beau and Fjord with Nott skirting around their heels with nervous energy. Yasha takes the rear, looking over her shoulder to seek out any peeping-toms in the nearly empty chamber.

Her mismatched eyes snag Allura, widening a little upon realising she’s still here. Allura puts on her best smile and raises a hand in a small wave.

The servant girl speaks up again. “Lady Vysoren, I–”

“Hush, child,” Allura says softly, not taking her eyes off Yasha.

Yasha does not return the smile, but she does nod. Her gaze is no longer filled with anger. Instead, it appears to have replaced itself with fatigue, and Allura cannot imagine a world where she would blame her for that.

With a soft click, Yasha shuts the throne room door behind the group, and Allura loses sight of the Mighty Nein.

She lets out a long breath she hadn’t realised she’d been keeping in. Outside, beyond the thick stone walls of the Ungebroch, thunder snaps across the sky.

Later, in her borrowed chambers, Allura does not pack.

There is something terribly wrong here.

She knows it – saw the ripples of it with her own eyes. There is something terribly wrong here and she’s not sure what it is or if she can fix it.

Because that terrible something has something to do with Master Trent Ikithon.

She _cannot_ possibly meddle in something like that. Can she?

This is not her problem. This is not her story. This is not her country or her people or her concern.

But then she remembers Jester. Jester, whose late-night messages from within the Heirloom Sphere had proven both amusing and tiring at times, but consistently upbeat and lively. To see that change so starkly – to see the little tiefling wound with unbridled, rage-filed tension in the face of Ikithon. To see every single one of the Mighty Nein surrounding their friend on all sides like wild animals protecting their young…

There is a story there.

And Caleb’s eyes… dead and cold and angry… a man curled into himself like taking up as much space as he does is a crime. Looking like a dog that has been kicked one too many times to still care about flinching away.

The story is not a happy one.

Allura grabs her staff and wanders over to the window, hands performing the somatic motions for _Sending_ before her whirling brain can catch up.

She’s going to help the Mighty Nein… if not as a formal diplomat, then as a favour between allies. They are, after all, friends of Yussa’s. If King Dwendal has a problem with that, he can take it up with the council.

“Kima, my love,” Allura says into the weave of the spell, feeling the magic snatch her words from her lips like a quick, soft breeze. “I’m afraid I may have to stay in Wildemount a little longer than we anticipated.”

She looks out the window for a brief moment, eyes catching a snatch of sunlight glimmering off the roof of one of the Candles visible from this side of the castle. For the first time in her handful of visits to the Empire’s capital, Allura takes a moment to wonder on the tower’s contents… she wonders if that one is Ikithon's.

With a sigh, she finishes the spell.

“My help may be needed after all.”

**Author's Note:**

> i'm going to snap trent ikithon in half like a wishbone.
> 
> find me on tumblr @fizzityuck or under the seat in front of you!


End file.
